Why George Will was Right About Newt

WASHINGTON – Never once did I buy into the notion of a Newt nomination. As a writer on politics going back into the ’90s, although I thought he’d have his moment, Mr. Gingrich simply isn’t what he pretended to be. Thanks to Ron Paul, but especially Michele Bachmann’s political vivisection of his record, the plummet is now in full swing. But it was George Will’s “Newt Gingrich Commits a Capital Crime” that hit the nut of Newt’s problems, which is now being seen fully in his latest bomb on judges.

SCHIEFFER: Let me just ask you this. You talk about enforcing it because one of things you say is if you don’t like what a court has done, the congress should subpoena the judge and bring him before congress and hold a congressional hearing. Some people say that’s unconstitutional but I’ll let that go for a minute. I just want to ask you from a practical standpoint, how would you enforce that? Would you send the Capitol police down to arrest him?

GINGRICH: Sure. If you had to. Or you’d instruct the Justice Department to send a U.S. Marshal. …

Juxtaposed against George Will, you capture Newt Gingrich’s persona perfectly:

We should not expect Gingrich to understand this until he understands that his work for Freddie Mac was not, as he laughably insists, in “the private sector.” – George Will

What George Will did was focus on Newt Gingrich’s “traditionalism,” which brings back former Speaker Dennis Hastert’s quote about Michele Bachmann.

“It had been a longstanding tradition in Congress to be fiscally conservative in every other district other than your own,” said John Feehery, president of QGA Communications and a top adviser to former Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert. “Bachmann apparently is being a traditionalist.” – Sam Stein

It’s a quote that makes my book, now available on Amazon, in a section about Gingrich type conservatives and their economic hypocrisy.

By trumpeting capitalism, using Mitt Romney’s experience at Bain Capital, Will brings to mind for me what David Brooks said about Donald Trump (which also makes it into my book) when he was riding high last spring.

He is riding something else: The strongest and most subversive ideology in America today. Donald Trump is the living, walking personification of the Gospel of Success.

Both Mitt Romney and Donald Trump made their money riding the bull, though in very different ways.

By contrast, Newt Gingrich has made his fortune by mining his government associations, like most former members of Congress, tapping into the “big government” money machine to enrich himself, using the very outlet conservatives are determined to “drown in the bathtub.”

Shorter Will: Newt is a opportunistic leach, sucking taxpayers dry, while utilizing their greatest enemy, “big government,” to do it.

It is not just a “capital crime,” it is the capital crime among consistent conservatives.

It is also the foundation on which Mr. Gingrich’s serial hypocrisy is built.

It is decidedly un-conservative, as well as being inconsistent, something Michele Bachmann still has not had to face, because she’s not a leading contender.

Andrew Sullivan, took issue with George Will and his defense of Romney’s Bain Capital photo. This from a guy with the Sarah Palin paternity fetish, who also believes intelligence is race-based.

And what Romney is revealing in that photo is pure worship and celebration of money and wealth – and the joys of rubbing it in the face of others.

It’s toxic. It’s ugly. It’s what helps drag conservatism down. You want a way to remind Reagan Democrats that the GOP is not their kind of show any more? The photo will do it. Can you imagine Reagan in that picture? Nah. Only the spoiled children of Reagan.

It’s ironic. When Sullivan talks about “the spoiled children of Reagan,” he obviously doesn’t realize that one of those petulant adolescents is Newt.

However, now that Newt has revealed his inner dictator, the danger he poses to our democratic republic is revealed to be much worse than the capital sin he committed against just conservatism.

Taylor Marsh is the author of the new e-book, The Hillary Effect – Politics, Sexism and the Destiny of Loss, the view from a recovering partisan, chosen by Barnes and Noble as one of 4 books in the launch of “NOOK First” Featured Authors Selection, and now available on Amazon. Marsh is a veteran political analyst and commentator. She has reported from the White House, been profiled in the Washington Post, The New Republic, and has been seen on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic, as well as on radio across the dial and on satellite, including the BBC. Marsh lives in the Washington, D.C. area. This column is cross posted from her new media blog.